Using Linux:Managing the Filesystem --> Previous Table of Contents Next CHAPTER 29Managing the Filesystem By James Youngman Mounting hard drives and other filesystems Mounting disks with Red Hat’s usermount command Mounting filesystems with the mount command Preparing and mounting filesystems with Red Hat’s cabaret tool Setting up filesystems with Red Hat’s fstool command Editing the filesystem table /etc/fstab Repairing damaged filesystems Restoring Linux system files Mounting and Unmounting Filesystems The filesystems on your hard disk drives are mounted for you automatically when the system boots. The removable devices (for example, floppy disks and CD-ROM drives) are not. All of the people using a Linux machine see the same view of the filesystem (although many of them are unable to access all parts of it). This means that mounting a filesystem is an action reserved for the superuser. The superuser can indicate that some filesystems can be mounted and unmounted by ordinary users (the user option in the file /etc/fstab is used for this). The superuser sets up the /etc/fstab file to specify what filesystems are used on each device, using either the cabaret command, the Red Hat control panel, or by using a text editor directly on the /etc/fstab file. SEE ALSO• To learn more about being a superuser and using the su command with Linux, see page 5. Using the usermount Command Red Hat Linux comes with a command called usermount that provides a GUI interface for mounting and unmounting filesystems. The usermount command must be run during an X11 session. When you start usermount, it shows you what filesystems you can mount (or format). The usermount program is shown in Figure 29.1. Figure 29.1  The usermount program. SEE ALSO• To learn more about the X Window System, see page 260. The buttons for /mnt/cdrom (the CD-ROM drive) and /mnt/floppy (the floppy disk drive) are labeled Mount and Format. If you click the Mount button with a disk in the drive, the disk is mounted and the button changes to Unmount, as shown in Figure 29.2. Figure 29.2  The disk is mounted and the button changes to Unmount. If you try to mount the floppy disk (/dev/fd0) without having a disk in the drive, you receive an error message in a dialog box similar to the one shown in Figure 29.3. Figure 29.3  Mounting without the disk in the drive results in this dialog box. Formatting a floppy disk with usermount 1.  To format a floppy disk with the usermount command, your system must be set up so that you are allowed (have permission) to write to the floppy disk drive. 2.  Insert a blank disk in your disk drive, and start the usermount command from the command line of a terminal window like this: # usermount 3.  The Format button is active for the floppy drive. Ensure that there is no data that you want to keep in the drive before clicking this button. 4.  Click the Format button. A dialog box appears, asking if you are sure. There is also a checkbox on the dialog box that asks if you want to do a low-level format (as shown in Figure 29.4). Figure 29.4  Specify whether you want to do a low-level format. If you don’t elect to do the low-level format because the disk has already been formatted, Linux builds a new, clean filesystem on the disk, which takes a second or so. A low-level format, on the other hand, takes quite a while. Although you can reformat your hard disk partitions by using Linux’s fdisk and mkfs programs, they are omitted from the usermount program in the interests of safety. SEE ALSO• For more information about using or setting permissions, see page 418. Previous Table of Contents Next